Verizon will charge $1.99 a song for wireless downloads, but will offer a discounted rate of 99 cents for songs downloaded onto PCs and transferred to mobile phones via a USB cable.

The service will offer consumers at least 500,000 songs when it becomes available on Jan. 16. The company hopes to offer a total of 1 million songs from all major music labels later in the year.

Vcast Music-enabled phones include the LG VX8100 and the Samsung a950.
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In the past two years, Verizon has upgraded its wireless network to third-generation technology called EV-DO, which not only allows laptop users to connect to the Internet on the go at high speeds, but also enables other services like online gaming, mobile video and now mobile music downloads.

Verizon’s EV-DO network is available to 150 million Americans in 180 major markets, allowing consumers to download files and send e-mail at 400 kilobits per second to 700kbps, Seidenberg said.

One Response to “Verizon launchs V CAST using Windows Media”

[...] At CES last week, Verizon Wireless launched its V CAST music service for mobile phones using Microsoft’s Windows Media technology. Now Engadget points to PCS Intel who is reporting that installing V CAST removes a phone’s previous ability to play ordinary MP3 files such as those acquired from Apple’s iTunes store or created from a personal CD collection without a conversion to Windows Media formats. Posted @ 8:41 am. Filed under Coopetition, Digital Media, Conferences, Technologies, Apple, DRM, CES06, Verizon [Permalink] [...]